by C. A. Gray
Just as he was about to open it, the now-unlocked library doors swung in to admit two more frantic-looking guests.
“Cole! Lily!” cried Peter.
“We followed you,” Cole gasped.
“I see that, but how –”
“I ran into Lily in the hall just before we saw you disappear with Kane,” Cole cut him off.
“We followed behind you all the way down the passage, but then when you two went in we figured if you came back out again, you’d see us, so we ran past the library so Kane didn’t run into us on his way out,” Lily explained. Then she added reproachfully, “We thought he was going to do you in or something, but it looked like you were going with him by choice!”
“I was,” said Peter.
“You – huh?” Cole said, now really confused. “No, listen, it doesn’t matter. Pete, the penumbra have your dad!”
“I know that, why do you think I came down here with him?” Peter exclaimed impatiently.
Cole and Lily exchanged a look. “I think I missed something here,” Lily said. “This is all Kane’s fault, isn’t it? You trusted him enough to follow him without telling anybody where you were going?”
“I had to, because he’s the only one who was willing to show me this!” Peter pointed at the book.
They both paused, for the first time appreciating their strange surroundings.
“What is it?” said Cole cautiously.
“It’s the prophecies, or some of them at least,” Peter said. “Isdemus said Kane found bits and pieces of them, because he found this place…”
“So you think if you can prove you’re not the Child of the Prophecy, the penumbra will let your dad go,” finished Cole.
Peter nodded. “Yes!”
“There’s only one problem, mate,” Cole said. “You are.”
“We don’t know that! Eustace said it could be one of three people!” said Peter heatedly. “For all we know, Kane’s right – it is him! If we can prove that, we can… I don’t know, find one of the penumbra and make a deal! Then they’ll let him go and we can leave here and everything will go back to normal!”
“So what if we find out it is Kane?” said Lily. “You’re just going to turn him over to the penumbra somehow in exchange for your dad?”
“Of course not,” said Peter, chagrined. The truth was, he hadn’t actually thought about that, but now that she mentioned it, the idea didn’t sound half bad.
Despite his words, Lily read the look on his face and suppressed a tiny smile. “Well,” she said, “what are we waiting for?”
Peter put the volume on the floor and Cole and Lily crowded around either side of him. This is it, he thought. With a deep breath, Peter opened it.
All of them stared for a moment, not quite believing their eyes. Peter flipped through the pages, one after the other, thinking that he must be missing something. Or maybe this was just the introduction. Or just the first several chapters…
“It’s – not English!” Peter said finally. He didn’t even recognize the characters. They looked like some form of hieroglyphics.
“Peter,” said Lily suddenly. “Do you think it’s written in the Ancient Tongue?”
“How should I know?” he snapped in frustration. He knew she had to be right, though.
“Well, it’s not my fault he gave you a book you can’t read!” she shot back.
Cole shook his head. “No, you said Kane could read it, so there has to be a way,” he murmured.
“Kane probably learned the Ancient Tongue in school!” Peter nearly shouted. “He knew I wouldn’t be able to read it!”
Cole ignored him, still inspecting the book intently. “Maybe there’s a key or something…” He began to rifle through the pages, pawing through them carelessly. Then, without meaning to, he planted one hand in the middle of a page towards the end as he searched for an index.
Seconds later, Cole’s body slumped forward, lifeless.
Lily screamed.
“Cole!” Peter cried, rushing to his side and shaking his friend frantically.
“I told you, I told you!” Lily cried. “That book is poisoned! Kane brought you here to kill you!”
“Shh! Wait!” Peter shouted over her, “He’s still breathing!” He pulled Cole off the book and laid him on his back. The second his hand broke free of the volume, he spluttered back to life again.
“Cole!” cried Lily and Peter at once in relief.
Cole blinked several times, trying to reorient himself to the room, and then, impossibly, an enormous grin spread over his face. “You guys have got to try that!”
Peter stared at him incredulously. “You looked like you were dead!”
“No, no!” he said excitedly. “Remember what Kane said earlier about that bloke at Paladin High who can merge minds? I don’t know what they did to that book, but I think it must be something like that!”
“You merged with the book?” said Lily blankly. “But it doesn’t have a mind.”
“Well, not with the parchment, with what’s written on it, I’m sure! I was in a tent, and it was dark, and I was sitting at a chair with a candle burning, and there was narration.”
“You heard the narration?” said Peter, confused. “Like, a voice just…”
“Not out loud,” Cole cut him off, shaking his head. “Not really in my head either… I just sort of knew what it would be. It was like they were my own thoughts, like I was reflecting on how I’d gotten there, except I wasn’t me, I was King Arthur! …I don’t know how to explain it; you just have to see for yourselves. Nothing happened yet – you pulled me out too soon.” He looked up at them eagerly. “You must’ve been right, Lily, it has to be written in the Ancient Tongue. Ordinary books can’t do that! Come on, let’s go back!”
Peter looked at Lily cautiously and said, “Well, seems to be the only way.” The book was still open to the page that Cole had held open with his hand. “Think we should go back to the same place or start at the beginning?”
“Well, I guess we know that page is …reasonably safe,” said Lily doubtfully. “You guys go ahead, then.”
“You guys?” Peter repeated. “You’re not coming?”
“Well, somebody has to stay here to pry you off, apparently!”
“How will you know when to do it?” Peter asked.
“When I get nervous you’ll never wake up again,” she said dryly.
“That seems reasonable,” said Cole. “Come on, Pete! On three!”
“Wait, do you think both of us can merge with it at the same time?” Peter asked.
“Don’t know, but we’re about to find out!” said Cole. And then together, they counted, “One, two –”
“Three!”
Chapter 17
The Year 470 AD
King Arthur was alone in his tent on the eve of a battle that he could not prevent; a battle that he knew would tear his kingdom apart. A single taper burned the last bit of wax into a puddle on the small wooden table, and he sat with his head in his hands, wondering how on earth things had gone so badly wrong.
He had betrayed everyone he had ever cared about: Cecily, Lancelot, Merlyn, his Knights, and his entire kingdom. His own son Mordred camped on the other side of Salisbury Plain this very night, preparing his troops to slaughter Arthur and his remaining Knights of the Round Table in the morning. Mordred was barely old enough even to fight in a war, but somehow the sullen little boy who had left Camelot five years ago to live with his Aunt Morgan in Cornwall had been transformed into an unrecognizable commander who spoke as if he had incalculably vast military experience. He looked at his father now as a stranger. And his eyes… Arthur could not shake the memory of their hollow gaze. Mordred had been born with eyes so pale they were almost translucent, but when he returned to Camelot to wage war, they had become obsidian.
Soulless, Arthur thought. There was no other word for them.
“Burning the midnight oil?” said a voice from the tent entrance.
Arthur turne
d at the voice of his old friend. Merlyn ducked so that his gray head would clear the top of the tent and slipped inside. The illumination from the single taper cast his face almost entirely in shadow, but Arthur would have known that form anywhere. Merlyn stood for a moment, appraising Arthur sadly.
It had been five years since they had last seen one another. Merlyn left with Queen Cecily when Arthur announced his intention to divorce her, his wife of ten years, and marry the beautiful Princess Guinevere of mysterious birth and origins, after knowing her for less than a week.
The years had not been kind to Arthur. His hair, once the color of sand, was now mostly gray, and his boyish face was lined with cares so great that at thirty-six, he looked like an old man.
“Merlyn,” Arthur said in greeting, but his tone was weary. He lacked the strength to sustain any further emotion at the reunion.
“I have news from the Continent, my old friend,” said Merlyn, inviting himself to sit down on the king’s bed.
Arthur looked away. “Can any news matter now?”
“I believe you will find that it can,” said Merlyn. “Cecily and I have been in Rome.”
Arthur looked up sharply. “Cess? Is she with you?” he demanded, and winced at his own use of her nickname. He no longer felt he had the right to use it. “Did she get my courier? Does she know of my contrition? That I love her?” He choked on the last words.
“All in good time,” said Merlyn, holding up a hand. “For now we must speak of other things. When you were a boy, I told you of the existence of the penumbra, the invisible creatures that sought to rule the world by attaching themselves to individual men in an attempt to control them. Do you remember?”
Arthur sank back into apathy. “Yes,” he affirmed, slumping forward.
“I told you the penumbra were chimerical, and could change their appearances to suit their purposes at the time.”
Arthur closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“Arthur,” Merlyn said so sharply that Arthur opened his eyes again. “I have known you all your life. I know what things you are capable of and what things you are not. I have known Lancelot since he entered your court at eighteen years of age. I know each of your strengths and weaknesses, your desires and dreams, and most significantly, the depth of your friendship and commitment to one another.”
“We are not friends now,” Arthur said, his voice flat. “He may refuse to fight against me tomorrow, but he will never forgive me for marrying Guinevere. He loved her. I knew it, and I married her anyway. I divorced my wife, my best friend, my Cess –” his voice broke, and he finished in a whisper, “I betrayed her and I betrayed Lance, and I married Guinevere anyway. Whatever happens to me on the battlefield tomorrow, at the hands of my own son… I deserve it.”
“Arthur, listen to me!” Merlyn demanded. “You are a good man. Your desire has always been to defend the weak and to create a society built on equality and brotherly love. You gave up the wealth, prestige, and glory that you might have had in order to become a king that serves the people. A man like that does not throw it all away over a beautiful woman! Cecily and I were so certain of that, that we spent the last five years unraveling the mystery of who Guinevere is and what she is after. Do you know what we discovered? She is not human, Arthur. She is one of them. She is one of the penumbra.”
Arthur blinked at him for a moment. He had not thought he still had the capacity to be surprised, but he was. “I do not understand.”
“There is not enough time left to explain how it’s possible,” said Merlyn impatiently. “The point is that she bewitched both you and Lancelot. You were not yourselves.”
“I do not understand,” Arthur said again, though he was sitting up now. “Why would she –”
“Because she was sent here. You would have been suspicious of her ambiguous origins too, if you had been even halfway in your right mind. She was sent from the Continent by the evil champion of the penumbra, a spirit creature who calls himself the Shadow Lord. For many thousands of years, the Shadow Lord has sought to rule the world of men, and has very nearly succeeded, controlling several of the largest kingdoms ever to exist. Up until very recently he sat on the throne in Rome, but he abandoned the body of Caesar Romulus Augustus, and the Empire has collapsed, overrun with warring Germanic tribes as we speak.”
Arthur’s head spun, trying to get a grip on what Merlyn was saying. He seized upon the only part that made sense to him. “What have I to do with Rome?”
“Nothing with Rome specifically, but with the Shadow Lord himself you are inextricably linked,” said Merlyn. “He wants to kill you.”
“Why?”
“Because of a prophecy,” said Merlyn.
Arthur shook his head. “What prophecy?”
“That was what took us five years to find out,” said Merlyn. “The oracles had all either fled the Empire or gone underground, fearing for their lives. We finally found an oracle on her deathbed, and having nothing further to fear, she told us what she knew.
“In the earliest age of the earth, when mankind was still mostly nomadic, one man conceived the idea of civilization in order to necessitate a leader. His goal, ultimately, was to rule over his fellow men. His tribe settled in Mesopotamia, and he was the first man ever to fashion for himself the title of king.
“Not satisfied with royalty for one lifetime only, he desired to rule over his fellow men completely and eternally. So, the penumbra led him to the legendary Philosopher’s Stone, which promised to transform the impure into the pure, or the body into spirit. Believing that this would make him immortal, the king used the Stone. Instead of granting him immortality in human form, however, it transformed him into an immortal, invisible spirit being, exactly like the penumbra except in one very important respect: having been born a man, the Shadow Lord, as he had now become, was capable of inhabiting the bodies of humans.
“Since then, the Shadow Lord has been the ruling power behind the empires of Babylon, Macedonia, Persia, and Rome, occupying the bodies of each of the conquering warlords and most recently those of the Caesars.
“During the latter years of the Roman Empire, however, he began to hear whispers of an unnamed threat against his power, and rumors that a king would arise and cast him out of the world of men, barring his return with a sword that is not of this world. At first he responded by either banishing or killing all of the oracles in order to silence their prophecies. When still the whispers grew louder, in fear he began to destroy leaders of his own Empire, trying to keep his adversary from being born. He abandoned the body of Caesar Julius Nepos and incited the Huns to sweep across Europe, displacing the Visigoths who in turn began to decimate the Empire. However, when he returned again to his throne, to the body of Caesar Romulus Augustus, he discovered that it had all been in vain. Through rumors he learned that the adversary king was foreign born. You had already grown into manhood and taken the throne here in Britain, the last place he ever thought to look. He sent the penumbra ahead of him as spies, in order to seduce you to your destruction. One of those spies was Guinevere.”
Arthur looked very pale. “Did the oracle tell you the rest of the prophecy?”
“Yes,” said Merlyn somberly. “It appears that to date, the Shadow Lord has only managed to learn this much:
“Out of Northumbria there rises a king,
Born of a union that rent the nation.
His sword, Excalibur, was forged in Avalon
Whose blade can sever body from spirit.
He shall take it up from the stone,
And cast it away into the depths,
Bearing with it the spirit of the Shadow Lord.
For seven ages and eight, it shall pass out of all knowledge.”
“There is more, however,” Merlyn said. “The rest, the part that the oracles managed to keep from him, goes like this:
“In the days of the Child of the Prophecy,
The Shadow Lord shall rise once more.
The child shall come from the line o
f the King,
The firstborn of his surviving heir,
Born in the seventh seven less eleven,
Under the sign of the Taijitu.
Nearest kin shall be locked in mortal combat.
Both shall fall
Yet the one who holds the blade that was broken
Shall emerge victorious.”
Arthur stared at him. He had no words.
“The Shadow Lord wants to kill you,” said Merlyn, “before the prophecy can be fulfilled.”
“‘Nearest kin shall be locked in mortal combat,’” Arthur whispered. “‘Both shall fall.’” He looked up at Merlyn and said, pleadingly, “That means I will kill my own son. Doesn’t it?”
“The Shadow Lord can only occupy one body at a time. I told you that he had abandoned the body of Caesar Romulus Augustus,” said Merlyn quietly. “Can you guess where he has gone?”
Arthur’s eyes widened, and then he squeezed them shut, as if hoping to shut out the harsh reality of Merlyn’s words. Yet when he closed his eyes, all he could see was Mordred’s pale face with those obsidian, soulless eyes. “No.”
“I have never been very good at lying,” said Merlyn. “I will not pretend that it is not too late to save Camelot, or even to save you. Yet all is not lost, as long as a Child of the King is born.”
“Mordred is my only son,” Arthur said in despair.
“So far,” said Merlyn cryptically. Then he said, as if he were changing the subject, “Ever since we confirmed that you were, in fact, bewitched, and received your courier begging forgiveness and demonstrating that you were yourself again, we have been trying to return to Camelot. You can’t imagine the obstacles we’ve encountered, but it seems that we have arrived in time, after all. There is someone who has been exceedingly anxious to see you again.”
